Style Is Publication

A four-line epigram that addresses Hemingway and Poe directly, equating style with publication and art with blood, and closing with the assertion that this is the American way.

Hemingway gets style, Poe gets blood, and 'so goes on the American way' — the poem divides American literature into its two currencies in four lines and then walks away. The brevity is the point: if style is publication and art is blood, there is nothing left to argue about, only a national habit to observe.